Motor training, and in particular rehabilitation and physical therapy are optimal when assessment, monitoring, adherence to the therapy program and patient engagement can be achieved.
Different processes are generally involved in physical therapy, namely physical examination, evaluation, assessment, therapy intervention, monitoring, and modification of the therapy program according to patient recovery. In traditional physical therapy, after a preliminary step of diagnostic and quantitative measurements, a patient is guided by a trained therapist to perform specific therapeutic exercises correctly. The tasks performed are designed according to the recovery plan and imply repetitions where the therapist needs to evaluate the exercise both qualitatively and quantitatively.
With recent technological advances developed in Virtual Reality (VR), innovative approaches to improve traditional physical therapy and rehabilitation practice can be explored. Typically, virtual reality is used in such therapies with a screen placed in front of a patient. On the screen, the patient's own movements are visualized. The VR is thus used in combination with actual physical therapy. The visual feedback motivates the patient and the (VR) computer system may also keep track of all exercises completed and thus again increase the patient's motivation.
An alternative use of VR is in applying a games setting. For example, the patient is actually walking on a treadmill or cycling on a static training bike, but the VR provides a stimulating environment of a run on the beach, a ride through a forest or otherwise.
US2014287389A discloses virtual reality-based adaptive systems and methods for improving the delivery of physical therapy and rehabilitation. The invention comprises an interactive software solution for tracking, monitoring and logging user performance wherever sensor capability is present. To provide therapists with the ability to observe and analyze different motion characteristics from the exercises performed by patients, novel visualization techniques are provided for specific solutions. These visualization techniques include color-coded therapist-customized visualization features for motion analysis.
US2011230792A discloses a system and method of motion assessment for use in medical analysis and treatment of motion impairments. The system is configured to stimulate, monitor and analyze voluntary movements of a subject. A surround-display is used to stimulate movement of the subject, a motion tracker monitors the movements of the subject, and a processor receives data from the motion tracker and may be configured to control the surround-display.
Commercial software solutions are available for improving physical therapy. Exoskeletons and robotic limbs with force feedback have also been employed for assisting impaired patients. However, these involve cumbersome and costly devices.
Moreover, the above mentioned processes do neither consider nor particularly focus in cases in which the therapy applies to a partially or completely immobilized limb covered with plaster, or a stroke impaired limb without mobility at all.
In examples of the present disclosure, at least some of the aforementioned problems are at least partially resolved.